The Baltimore Orioles finally pulled the plug on Brandon Hyde after six years and change at the helm. It's hard to blame them: This team looks utterly lifeless, stalling at 15-28 with a 10.5-game gap between the last-place O's and the first-place New York Yankees in a cutthroat division entering play on Saturday.
There are countless reasons for Baltimore's letdown this season, and of course Hyde shares a good portion of that blame. Still, it feels like he is more of a scapegoat figure, martyred in a vain effort to cover up deeper flaws within the organization.
While Hyde has been frustratingly aloof in the face of severe disappointment, he was dealt a bad hand, which starts with ownership and trickles down through the organization. Here are the three folks most to blame for letting it reach this point.
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Charlie Morton was not the stalwart vet Baltimore ordered in free agency
It's hard to earnestly blame Charlie Morton for the effects of Father Time, but when the Orioles lined up a cushy $15 million contract, few expected such a steep and sudden decline from the 41-year-old. Morton had been a paragon of stability for the Braves in recent years. While not a shutdown ace, his ability to tread water and keep games close was integral to Atlanta's success.
Morton has completely fallen off a cliff in Baltimore. He boasts a horrid 8.25 ERA and 1.88 WHIP through 11 appearances (six starts), already demoted to the bullpen on multiple occasions. Every time he hits a jam, he seems to implode. Morton's stuff has lost all its zip. He's out there throwing meatballs, with an appropriately abysmal 0-7 record to show for it.
Baltimore thought of Morton as a potential Corbin Burnes replacement — a good-enough No. 1 starter meant to keep a competitive team, well, competitive. Instead, he has almost single-handedly dragged Baltimore's rotation to the MLB basement. Morton is not the only underperforming pitcher on the roster, but his swift demise has left the O's grasping at straws.
Mike Elias probably deserves the brunt of the blame for Orioles' struggles
The "real" reason Baltimore finds itself in this position is the front office. Brandon Hyde was not put in a position to succeed. A year after swinging the biggest trade in recent organizational history for Burnes, Baltimore let him walk over $30 million and a couple extra years on his contract. In response, the O's dished out a one-year deal to an aging Morton.
Elias is responsible for the dissolution of Baltimore's pitching staff. He also handed out his first ever multi-year contract last winter, which is an absurd fact on its own. That it happened to be Tyler O'Neill on a three-year, $49 million deal is even worse. O'Neill looks like a poor immitation of Anthony Santander's All-Star bat in the outfield. It's one of the worst value contracts in MLB right now.
Rather than take an influx of resources from new ownership and pivot Baltimore toward contention, Elias has remained frustratingly risk-averse and has thus put the O's in an impossible position — loaded with up-and-coming talent, but completely incapable of filling out the margins of the roster or elevating the core with a substantial free agency investment. You cannot play it safe if the goal is to win the World Series. Elias outright refuses to act like a winning GM.
Adley Rutschman's inexplicable decline leaves the O's lineup lacking
What's going on with Adley Rutschman? The 27-year-old catcher remains an integral part of Baltimore's future — at least on paper — but it's not happening at the plate right now. Through 41 games and 145 at-bats, he sits at .214 with a .654 OPS. This is the dude who finished 12th in MVP voting as a rookie and ninth in his sophomore campaign. He's a back-to-back All-Star. Year four was supposed to feel different.
It's way too early to close the book on Rutschman, a plus-plus backstop with a real sense of his pitchers' skill sets, but it's not like the Orioles are blowing teams away on the mound right now. As for the offense, well, Rutschman sits well below average right now. So do most catchers, which softens the blame a little bit, but Baltimore was supposed to have a unicorn on its hands — the rare five-tool superstar at baseball's toughest, most idiosyncratic position. Oh well.
The entire O's lineup has fallen short of expectations this season (Ryan O'Hearn innocent), but Rutschman's decline feels particularly emblematic of what went wrong with the Hyde era. Baltimore has all this premium talent coming up through the pipeline, but aside from Gunnar Henderson, who has really popped at the MLB level? So much of this O's lineup is rife with potential, but the actual results tend to underwhelm. Rutschman going from a potential franchise cornerstone to a mid-tier catcher was on nobody's bingo card, and it's that sort of sharp decline that puts Hyde under the microscope.
We shall see if Rutschman can turn it around with a new voice in the dugout. If not, Baltimore's climb back to the top will be long and arduous.